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But as eager as Victoria might have been to marry her way out of her father’s house, she had no intention of squandering any of her precious freedom now that she’d done so. That phase of her life was behind her.
And she had hoped that her husband would be reasonable, but hope was not the same thing as an appropriate plan. So while Ago spent the next week storming about the house, arranging things to his satisfaction, Victoria merely...bided her time.
She endured her father’s company for a day or so before he apparently finished all the shouting he intended to do on a subject that was now, to her mind, moot. She was relieved when he drove off in his usual temper. For then it was a simple matter of wandering about the villa like a biddable cow, expressing no opinions and doing whatever was asked of her. Blood test?Happy to oblige.Required appearances at two meals a day?How lovely.
In those meals, Victoria did her best to act as bland and insipid as possible without arousing any suspicion so that, when a week had passed, Ago could remove himself from the family estate with every reason to suppose that the dull, boring paragon of sullied virtue he had married out of duty would just...stay where he’d put her.
Like an heirloom on a dusty shelf he might forget to look for again.
She waited another day or two, just to make sure that there were no secret guards lurking about the place, keeping themselves hidden until after the master’s departure.
And then, a week and a half after marching down the aisle to marry the ferocious Ago Accardi, and with the blood test to prove that she absolutely was carrying his firstborn son, Victoria Cameron Accardi helped herself to one of the many cars in the villa’s garages—because it wasn’t stealing if they were married, was it?—and escaped.
CHAPTER FOUR
“REPEATYOURSELF,PLEASE,” Ago suggested, much too quietly, to his head of security.
The man stood before him, hat literally in hand and an expression on his face that Ago would have said could never possibly appear on the visage of a man who was his own army. Was that...contrition? Or even worse—panic?
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” the man said stiffly. “She abandoned the vehicle in Florence. We suspect she caught a train out of the city, but we’re still chasing down any available camera footage that might give us a clue as to which direction she might have gone in.”
Ago had been back in London for three days. He had finally gotten back to work. He had, mere moments before, congratulated himself with no small amount of relief that he was truly blessed. For despite the whisper of scandal attached to Victoria Cameron, and despite the glimpses here and there that he’d had of the real her beneath the layers of deference that had no doubt been bred in her from the start, she had settled into her new reality beautifully.
Which meant that he could compartmentalize to his heart’s content and arrange the world as he saw fit. The way he always had done.
As if that woman, now his wife, made him feel nothing at all.
As if his remarkable divergence from his usual dutiful existence had never happened.
What his security chief was telling him made absolutely no sense.
“I’m having trouble understanding you,” he said, though he certainly was not. “Are you truly suggesting that my wife fled the family estate and abandoned one of my vehicles on the streets of Florence? Like some kind of thief?”
“Her maids report that she took very few clothes with her, which could indicate that this is nothing more than a lark,” the man replied. “Unfortunately, she also took her passport.”
Ago pushed back from the great, wide desk that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him, and stood. He saw the man before him repress a flinch, and could only wonder what expression must be on his face that a former SAS officer thought he might take a swing at him.
But it also reminded him that his façade was cracking, and he couldn’t have that. He had not spent year after year crafting it into appropriate shape to let some foolish girl wreck him because she thought she wason a lark.
And especially because he did not, as policy, choose to engage with people who were not in the same room. Who were not even in the same country, damn her.
He turned abruptly and faced out the window. And though he knew London arranged itself prettily before him on this cold morning, he saw nothing.
Nothing, that was, except Victoria. The memories of her that plagued him and had chased him across half a year. This was all his fault. He knew that. And yet still he could not seem to keep himself from going over that night in the garden again and again.
He even knew why. He was desperate to cast her in the role of temptress. A terrible harlot when he knew full well that no other man had touched her. She had not needed to tell him. He was experienced enough to know that her charmingly astonished reactions to every touch, every kiss were not feigned.
It had all been new to her.
And what was new to him, all these months later, was that he could not seem to shake the ghost of her.
Not even marrying her and discovering that she did indeed carry his son, not even the old family house packed full of memories he usually avoided entirely, seemed to help.
“You may leave me,” he told his security chief through a jaw that felt as if it might shatter at any moment. “I will expect an update within the hour.”
“Yes, sir,” came the immediate reply.
With a hint of relief, as if the man had expected Ago to rage and throw things.
